When Juneau voters fill out this year’s municipal election ballot, they’re going to see two recall petitions – one asking whether to recall Board of Education President Deedie Sorensen, and another asking whether to recall board Vice President Emil Mackey.
The recall questions made it on the ballot after a local group gathered enough signatures for them to qualify — nearly 2,400 signatures each.
But qualifying for the ballot doesn’t mean what’s written in the petitions is accurate.
The ballot states that Sorenson and Mackey demonstrated misconduct and incompetence by failing to understand accounting errors in the fiscal year 2024 budget, resulting in a $7.9 million deficit and a taxpayer loan from the city.
According to Municipal Attorney Emily Wright, the City and Borough of Juneau’s Law Department determines if there are legal grounds, or a reason, for the recall – not if that reason is true or factual.
“We as the Department of Law do not have to know whether this is true or not,” she said. “We don’t look to see whether it’s fixed or not. We don’t make any of those judgment calls. We just say, ‘Okay, does it meet the threshold?’”
The recall group originally wanted to include everyone on the board who voted in favor of the consolidation of Juneau’s high schools and middle schools earlier this year. But Mackey and Sorensen are the only current members of the board who are eligible for recall due to the timing of their terms.
The group cited several allegations against the pair, but only one met the threshold to trigger a recall. And, because it qualified legally, the rest is up to the voters.
“It’s now the voter’s job to determine whether it’s true or not. It’s not my job to say this is true or not,” Wright said.
In fact, what’s written on the ballot as the reason for the recall isn’t completely accurate.
What actually happened?
The ballot says that Sorensen and Mackey failed to do their duty as board members during the 2024 fiscal year budget process – when district administration discovered accounting errors and overestimated enrollment numbers. It resulted in a multimillion-dollar budget gap. The school board ultimately addressed that deficit and never actually took out a loan from the city, as the ballot states.
But, for the 2025 fiscal year — which started this past July — the board also had to address another multimillion-dollar deficit. That is what led the district to close some schools, consolidate grades and reduce staff.
Mackey said he thinks that’s the real reason people want him off the board.
“A lot of it is just angry Thunder Mountain parents,” he said. “And I get it, they should be angry. But the truth is, is that it had to be done.”
Part of the consolidation plan closed one of the two high schools in town – Thunder Mountain in the Mendenhall Valley. That means students from both high schools are now at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé downtown. And Thunder Mountain High School is now Thunder Mountain Middle School.
“We had to shut down one high school or the other, or we were going to lay off another 30 to 60 teachers, depending on what we were looking at,” Mackey said.
Sorensen agrees that the actual reason for the recall is the consolidation vote.
“I believe that the impetus for and the hostility towards Dr. Mackey and I stems from the fact that we were part of the block of four votes that voted for consolidation, that consistently voted for consolidation. In particular, the closure of Thunder Mountain High School,” she said.
But Jenny Thomas, one of the leaders of the recall effort, disagrees.
“It’s not so much Thunder Mountain. I mean, you closed Floyd Dryden and you closed [Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School], and the narrative that’s being put out there is as angry TM parents — a large majority of my signers were middle school parents,” she said.
The recall group is largely made up of parents, and Thomas is also running for school board this year.
“I would hope that they would realize this is not coming from a place of anger because we didn’t get what we wanted, I know that’s being pushed out there,” she said. “It’s not just TM families, it’s everybody that was affected.”
What’s next?
Thomas knows that recalling the two school board members won’t undo the board’s decisions to close Thunder Mountain High School or the rest of the consolidation process. But she said it will fix some problems.
“I think it’s going to make the board listen to the public a little bit more. Because, I mean, you testify, right? Hours of testimony, you never hear back from them,” she said. “What’s the point of testifying? I mean, it makes you feel like your opinion and your voice doesn’t matter, and you don’t want anybody in the community to feel like that.”
Mackey said that recalling him and Sorensen will send a chilling message to future board members.
“They’re going to look back at this if this succeeds, and they’re not going to make the hard choices, because they’re going to be scared they’re going to be recalled, they’re going to be drug in the mud, and they’re going to be held accountable for something that wasn’t their fault,” he said. “And that is scary — it’s terrifying.”
But Mackey said it won’t stop him from running again in the future. Sorensen and Mackey’s current terms end next year. Sorensen said she plans to retire after that.
There haven’t been many recall questions on Juneau’s ballots over the years. Since 1970, voters have only been asked twice whether someone should be recalled, according to city clerk records.
If Mackey and Sorensen are recalled, the remaining school board members will have up to 30 days to appoint two new members.